


Our Troubles (Miles Away)

by CarnalCoffeeBean



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Candlenights, Gen, Lucretia-centered, Stolen Century, Team Human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 17:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13081758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarnalCoffeeBean/pseuds/CarnalCoffeeBean
Summary: It’s strange to think now, but she’d had plans for after the mission. All of them did. After all, the mission was only ever supposed to last two months.





	Our Troubles (Miles Away)

It’s strange to think now, but she’d had plans for after the mission. All of them did. After all, the mission was only ever supposed to last two months.

 

When she’d glanced over the brochure, fresh-graduated from the IPRE, with a few scientific and magical biographies already under her belt, she’d looked down at the stock space photo with the profile of a soaring silver ship. The foreground screamed the words, “THE STARBLASTER—DISCOVER FOR YOURSELF!” in a neon pink serif font that was, frankly, way too big, bold, and jagged. Basic IPRE advertising stuff, but then—that ship … Everyone at the IPRE had heard about the Starblaster, this miracle vessel that’d promised to take the best and the bravest to the edges of the planes and whatever lay beyond. Rumors ran amok: from the engineering students who'd gotten to lay their hands on the thing, feel the hum of life stirring beneath their fingers; from the leadership and piloting students taken into the shipbuilding yard for "inspiration;"from those fortunate few who'd worked for the higher-ups, sat in on their meetings, taken notes with wide eyes. Nothing had yet been confirmed or set in stone. This was the first hint of an actual mission, and it was, judging by the minuscule, dense paragraphs wedged between clunky images of spiral universes and stars, a doozy. Traveling beyond the planar system in a new ship for—two months, smack dab in the middle of autumn, Pahlsi and Gusi. Not so bad, and for the opportunity? The story? She’d folded it neatly in half and placed it in the front pocket of her bag, behind the transcript of her latest interview.

 

When she’d filled out her application and resumé, she’d done it with perfect posture and a new pen, at her desk with the sun hazily filtering in through clean, worn curtains. She knew, logically, that the humanoids who'd be reading her answers weren’t watching and wouldn’t care if she slouched. Her back remained ramrod-straight. Something about it felt like sitting for the entrance exam to the IPRE all over again. The application started out, of course, by asking for all the information she’d just spent ten minutes writing in her best handwriting on her resumé. After that, the very first question regarding the actual mission read: Are you willing to spend two months on an interplanar vessel with up to nine other humanoids? Mentally, she’d shrugged. She’d survived rooming with others in college. Two months couldn’t be worse than that.

 

When she’d received the acceptance letter, her friends and colleagues, the few she’d told, had given her warm congratulations and asked when she’d get back. She had scheduled a dinner date with some of them, exactly a week after the ship returned, so she could tell them all about it—nothing ground-breaking, of course, that was all property of the IPRE. But she'd done similar things before. Certainly there’d be other stories she could tell that’d slip between the cracks of the confidentiality agreement that held her quiet until the book and all the scientific and magical articles were published. She’d worked around those before, and by the time she’d got back, she’d have two whole months worth of information—loads to pick through and around.

 

When she’d met Davenport for the first time, the serious, quiet gnome with a moustache as bristly as his personality, she could tell he was sizing her up. He’d asked her, point-blank, if she’d be alright leaving the planet—the planar system—for two months. With the lower-ranking members manning the mission planet-side, there’d been some hemming and hawing, a bit of hesitation whenever the time-table was mentioned. The ship was brand-new, and the engines weren’t—well, a lot of it was theoretical, after all, untested. Still, looking at Captain Davenport, watching his interactions with ground control as they tried to prepare for the best and the worst—he stood firm. The mission had been approved for two months, and as the Captain, that was exactly as long as it would be allowed to take, come hell or high water. She jotted down a note one day, watching the Captain as he dealt with another frazzled officer, to send him a congratulatory card when it was all over, and to make sure he received it two months to the date when they got back. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d suspected he might appreciate the sentiment.

 

Their rations, the chemical and alchemical ingredients and supplies, their necessities, their personal effects—all enough to outfit a vessel for two months of constant who-knows-what, their world’s best efforts against the unpredictibility of the outer planes stuffed into one small ship with a blazing white ring at the back of it, a mostly theoretical, barely tested method of travel that wasn’t even imaginable, at the bare minimum, a year ago. Extra parts were stuffed in every nook and cranny that wasn’t already filled to the brim with scientific or life-giving supplies. Lucretia had been outfitted with ten journals and a box of fifty pens, but she’d requested fifteen more journals and at least twice the number of pens. Then she reconsidered and asked for more. Taako and Lup fought tooth and nail for more closet space, and Merle pressed just as hard to keep a plant or three in his quarters. Lucretia acquiesced, eventually, to stowing extra journals under her mattress. Two months is a long time, after all, and who knows what they might find, what they’d need to record?

 

She’d told her mother two months.

 

It was the only comfort she could give as she’d said goodbye.

…

 

“You won’t even miss me,” Lucretia said, smiling. “It’s such a short time. I’ll be home in time for Candlenights.”

Her mother smiled back, tears swimming in dark, dark eyes. “This big, fancy mission, and you, barely old enough to drink the eggnog when you get back.” The smile broke, then, replaced by trembling lips, a grimace, a furrowed brow. “Is it—it can’t be safe, can it? It’s so —“

“Mom, mom,” a hand landed, trembling, too, on a quaking shoulder. Lucretia drew a breath, slowly, then another, buying time.

“It’s—important.” She looked up then, into her mother’s eyes. “It’s what I’ve wanted—what I’ve needed—to do. I want to know what happens. I want to tell what happens. Telling this story, mom…” 

Her mother sighed and straightened. There was a moment’s pause, an uncertainty; then she squared her shoulders and looked Lucretia dead in the eye. Behind the film of tears, she saw a look she knew well: steel, spine, courage, calm, a promise that this, this too will be borne. Lucretia wished, then, like she had before, for a tenth of the strength in that gaze, in that woman.

“And there’s no lengths you won’t go to get the end of a good story.” She touched Lucretia’s face softly, just with the ends of her fingertips. “By Candlenights.”

She turned her cheek into her mother’s touch. “I’ll bring back a present.”

“You’ll bring yourself back,” her mother corrected. “And in perfect condition, you hear? None of this silliness, like broken bones or bruises, Lucretia.”

Lucretia closed her eyes, then, and buried her smile in her mother’s hand. “Yes, mom,” she sing-songed, an echo of when she had done the same as a child. Her mother chuckled softly and gathered her in for a hug. Lucretia ducked her head under her mother’s chin, let herself feel small, safe, warm, just for a few seconds.

“Candlenights,” her mother whispered, cheek pressed against her daughter’s white, tightly coiled hair.

“Candlenights,” she agreed, a lump in her throat. Lucretia grabbed her mother’s arm and pulled it more securely around her. She held on.

 

…

 

Out of a thousand saltwater memories, it’s this one that fogs at the edges of her consciousness and refuses to be shaken. The silence on this plane is unbelievable, ghastly, endless, but then, that’ll happen on an uninhabited planet, she supposes. It’s their second landing on one, and the quiet is enormous, threatening to swallow them whole if they listen for too long. This sort of night, with the void screaming in her ears and no one else around to mess up the kitchen or clatter around the lounge, she’d put on some fantasy Frank Sinatra. It’s late, though, and some of the crew are already retired to their quarters.

Notes for this planet have been sparse. She’s recorded in depth the life cycle and composition of the particular floral species that’s overtaken the planet, choking out competition some hundreds of years ago and flourishing ever since. They’d explored from high and low for ruins, towns, cities, and found nothing, no trace of sentient life anywhere. She had, in a fit of boredom, asked Merle to see what he could glean from the plants, but even he wasn’t keen on this particular specimen. His “botany senses weren’t tingling great”, he’d said, and she hadn’tfelt inclined to press further. Maybe later. Luckily, the plant was edible and not averse to a bit of pruning, which meant that, although Taako and Lup were growing frustrated at the lack of diversity in their ingredients, at least food was plentiful.

This, though. She looks out the window at the white flakes drifting hazily down, sticking to the windowpane and collecting in sheets at the bottom. The greenery that had been their constant, unchanging view for nine months is lost, blanketed in white that gathers in drifts here and there.

The silence splits as the main door slides open. Two robed individuals step in, puffing, shaking white off themselves, and stomping their shoes. She looks over the back of the couch.

“Well, it’s not dangerous,” Barry says.

“It’s not cold, either—no good for snowballs,” Magnus chimes in.

“Not with that density,” Barry agrees. “You’d need something that can melt down for compactness and structure.” Lucretia leans over the back of the couch to watch them. The white stuff seems to be clinging a lot more than what they’d … well, what they’d have expected on their home planet. The white against the red makes for a pleasant contrast, though, especially against Mangus' wide smile or Barry's softer profile, glasses fogged up in the sudden temperature shift. Her fingers itch for a pencil.

“Not too much,” Barry adds, “unless you want to throw a rock.”

“Rocks are great weapons.” Magnus gestures enthusiastically, as he does about a great number of weapons. “You can do a lot with a rock. Not as much as with these, though,” and he flexes his arms.

Lucretia looks flatly at the two. “White stuff not good for snowballs, rocks good, Magnus’ muscles better. Anything else notebook-worthy tonight?” she asks Barry, who’s holding back a smile.

“I grabbed a few pieces to figure out its chemical composition—do you need one for a close-up sketch?” He holds out the temperature-set collection bag, mouth open towards her. Unthinking, she reaches in—and immediately yanks her hand out, but it’s too late. The gunky white stuff is already clinging to her hands, sticking and pulling in all sorts of unpleasant ways that promise to be a bitch to get rid of.

“EW! What the — Barry — !” Magnus is bent over, laughing at her reaction.

“Your — face,” he wheezes.

“Weird texture, huh?” Barry gets out before busting into laughter again.

The flash-cold temperature dulls in a minute, heating in her hand. Unfortunately, the added warmth changes nothing about the sticky-slimy-prickly texture that had repelled her in the first place. If anything, it clings more stubbornly.

“What is it?” she asks, trying to keep it off of anything important.

“Slime?”

“Goo?”

“Gogurt?”

“Yuck?”

“Yuck it is,” Lucretia decides, still unsure of what to do with the bag in her lap or the handful of … yuck … dripping down into it. She sticks her hand back into the temperature-set bag, shuddering at the texture. “Can we … eat it? Drink it?”

Barry’s face immediately turns long-suffering, and he looks over at Magnus. “We’ll see in a bit.”

“It tasted fine,” Magnus protests, flopping down next to her. “And isn’t that science? Experimenting and, you know … stuff?”

“It only counts if you write it down,” Barry says. Magnus pokes her shoulder.

“Lucy, Barry’s a jerk. You have a lot of blank books. Can you write it down so that it’s officially real science?”

“Magnus, if I wrote down every terrible thing you chose to injest, I’d run out of bookspace before the next year is up.” Fuck it. She wipes the stuff down the front of Magnus’ robes, then flicks a bit off at Barry. It sticks to the lens of one of his glasses, starfish-like.

“Hey!” Barry yelps, at the same time Magnus yells, “Lucretia!,” delighted.

“You know,” he continues, catching her shoulder in a meaty hand before she can slip away, “you really should’ve thought this through.” Barry grins, grabs a spare red robe from a hook, and drapes it over her.

“Hey — my books! My notes!” Her protests are rather spoiled by her wide grin.

“Don’t worry. They’ll be nice and safe on the ship,” Barry laughs, and then Magnus picks her up and carries her out the door.

“You’re going to pay for that, Lucy,” he announces, and he drops her straight into a large pile of the stuff. She shrieks, but out here in the cold, it’s not as sticky as it was. It’s soft and fluffy, in fact, and she loses sight of the two other humans for a second as it floats, displaced, around her.

A yell sounds from Barry. She looks up to see Magnus on his back, dragging him to the ground. “Help!” he calls over to her. She grins.

“You know, I would, but my hand … “

“Is fine, Lucretia, it doesn’t stick when it’s cold, now come help me!”

Magnus lets out a fake roar. “You really should’ve muscled up, Barry. See what these babies can do!” He throws Barry over his shoulder and into another pile of the white stuff. It flies everywhere, rather dramatically, as he lands with an ‘oof!’

Lucretia checks her hand, and sure enough, there’s nothing clinging to it. “Nice,” she comments, and grabs her wand. A quick heat cantrip aimed at their feet seems to do the trick. Barry, having scrabbled halfway up, sinks back onto his hands and knees. Magnus takes a step, struggles, and faceplants. Lucretia turns to run to the door before anything else happens—or, ah, she tries to. She sinks an inch into the suddenly muddled white, and her boots refuse to lift. She looks back. Barry’s wand is in his hand, and he’s twirling it in his fingers, something he only ever does when he thinks he’s got the upper hand.

Magnus has struggled up to his feet, too. She casts another heating cantrip at the area surrounding them, but Barry deflects it with a flick of his wand.

“Gotcha,” Magnus grins, and he launches himself at her.

 

…

 

It’s later, much later, when they manage to drag themselves back onto the common room of the ship, laughing and huffing, red-cheeked with exertion. Lucretia is tucked snuggly under one of Magnus’ arms and has been granted the dignity of walking, after an amicable truce midway through. Barry is not afforded the same respect. He’s thrown over Magnus’ other shoulder. 

Magnus stops in the middle of the common room and announces, “Last stop!” He dumps Barry on the couch and flops down. Lucretia perches near the end, and Magnus slings an arm around her shoulders.

“Team Human!” he cheers. Barry groans and shoves Magnus’ arm off his chest.

“Team Death-By-Yuck-Injestion,” he grouses.

“Don’t open your mouth in a yuck fight, Barry. First rule: don’t swallow.” Magnus leans back, squishing him into the cushions. “Or you can, if you want. Up to you.” The only part of Barry Lucretia can see is a beet-red cheek. Sticking out the side, a hand flaps weakly, trying to hit at the bulk of Magnus.

“I don’t—uh.” A pause. “There’s no good way to answer this, is there?”

Magnus laughs, shifting his weight again.

“Lucretia!” Barry struggles to get his head free. “Lucretia,” he whispers, “he’s crushing me!”

“I’ll be sure to record your heroic death. How do you want to go this time: yuck swallowing or Magnus’ muscles?,” Lucretia says as she wriggles out from under Magnus’ legs. She stands up from the pile, grabs her notebook, and pretends to flip through to the current page, pen resting at her lips in contemplation. “Too long. Crushed by Magnus’ muscles it is,” she decides.

“Yes,” Magnus grins.

From below, Barry shoves at Magnus, apparently not yet resigned to his fate. “Respect— your—elders,” he bites out, having pushed the bulk of his body off his lungs.

“Nah,” Magnus replies easily, and Barry’s face disappears again.

A blinking number in the reflection of the window catches her eye, and she finds herself looking up, away from the ruckus. Most everything is converted over to the new planet’s routines as soon as they figure it out, but the clock/calendar still keeps IPRE regulation time. As Barry had explained it, no matter what sort of cycle system the planet has, by some weird quirk, the horrible, dead, hungry void thing after them only attacks once an IPRE-regulation year is up. Davenport reasoned that if they kept it the same as its original programming, it would be easier to measure how much time they had until the Hunger came. No one had argued.

A soft chime sounds as it clicks over to 00.00 and the new day starts. She checks the calendar as the date flashes in muted colors.

“Hey, guys?” She says, soft and quiet. Barry gets in a last shove, and then they pause.

“Yeah, Lucretia?” Barry says.

“Happy … happy Candlenights.” A few seconds pass, and then Magnus’ arm grabs her and pulls her back down. They all sit up to watch the clock as it clicks over to 00.01. Slowly, they lean into each other, still looking at the clock.

“Huh,” Barry says, and Magnus nods.

“Yeah,” Magnus clears his throat. “I guess, uh, happy Candlenights.”

Barry grabs a blanket and drapes it over all of them. Magnus nods off first. His snoring is comfortingly loud and rhythmic as Lucretia curls up further into his side. A flick of Barry’s wand, and shifting, colored lights glow on the walls, reflect out into the white square of world outside. She smiles sleepily and reaches across Magnus for Barry’s hand. He lays his hand over hers, keeping it warm.

“Happy Candlenights, Lucretia,” he whispers. She smiles and curls her fingers around his.

**Author's Note:**

> Please help me. I haven't written fic in literal years, but these nerds make me feel things. 
> 
> Also, Lucretia has to be a pen-hoarder. I ran out of pens on a vacation once, and it's now the one thing I make sure I buy weeks, if not months, in advance. Based on my experience, I cannot imagine how bad Lucretia's pen-hoarding must be. 150 pens was not enough.


End file.
